An effective dispatch strategy for hybrid power management

Decentralised power generation systems based on renewable energy can play an important role in hastening electrification of isolated areas in developing countries. Next generation, smart microgrids present sophisticated solutions for monitoring and visualising of all available resources and calculating of optimised schedules for dispatch of resources to ensure the most cost effective and sustainable operational strategy. This paper discusses an algorithm for economic dispatch of an off-grid microgrid comprising of a PV-array and wind turbine combined with a battery and variable speed diesel generator backup. The nature of the dispatch strategy developed has been compared to existing dispatch strategies. The sharing of the load amongst the various sources has been simulated for the given setup and the results are analysed.